University of Virginia Library

42. CHAPTER XLII.
THE ALARM.

NEITHER Mrs. Burton nor Maude had slept very
soundly that night. Both had been haunted with
a conviction that they heard something about the
house, stealthy footsteps Mrs. Burton thought, and she
shook her snoring spouse vigorously, and tried to make him
get up, receiving for reply, “Pish, only one of your fidgets;
go to sleep, do, and let me alone.”

And so poor, timid Mrs. Burton listened until her ears
ached, and, hearing nothing more, made up her mind that
she had been mistaken, and there really was no cause for
alarm. Maude, too, had taken fright, and knocked softly
at Georgie's door, but Georgie was in the woodbine arbor,
and did not hear her, and she went back to bed and fell
asleep again, and was just dreaming that her wedding had
proved to be her funeral, when a piercing shriek rang through
the house, followed by another and another, each louder,
more appalling than the other, until every sleeper was awake
and huddling together in the halls, demanded what it was,
and where the screams came from.

Jack was the first to decide that the noise was in Georgie's
room, and entering through the unlocked door, he saw his
sister sitting up in bed; her eyes rolling wildly, her long
black hair falling over her night-dress, and her whole face
the very image of terror, as she shrieked, “The burglar—
the man—been here—in this room—look—where he went
and what he did. Oh! Jack, Jack, I am dying, I shall
die!”

She continued her wild ravings until Jack succeeded in
quieting her so far that she was able to tell her story, amid

a series of moans and gasps and sobs. She had been suddenly
awakened by some slight sound in her room, and saw
a man wearing a mask, standing, revolver in hand, close at
her bedside, and evidently watching her. Before she could
scream, so paralyzed was she with fear, his hand was over her
mouth, and his hot breath on her face, as he bent close to
her and said, “Be perfectly quiet, if you wish to save your
life. Scream once, or make any sound which shall attract
attention, and you are a dead woman before I leave the
room. I have no wish to harm you, but your diamonds I
must have. Frozen with terror she had not dared to move,
but lay perfectly still while the villain searched her dressing-bureau,
and took, she did not know what.

“Look, Maude,” she gasped; but Maude had already
looked, and found the diamonds gone, and the purse empty;
but the emeralds and pearls were there safe,—a state of
things accounted for on the supposition that the robber had
been startled by some noise, and left his depredations unfinished.
He fled through the door, Georgie said; and having
finished her tale, she fainted entirely away, while the
male members of the house dispersed outside to hunt for
the thief, and the ladies staid to minister to the fainting
woman.

There was no shamming now. Georgie had borne so
much, and suffered so much, that the faint was real; and
she lay so long unconscious, and looked so white and
corpse-like, that Mrs. Burton went off into hysterics, declaring
her darling was dead. As soon as possible, a physician
came, and after carefully examining his patient, and
listening to the story of the robbery as related by each of
the dozen women in the house, appeared to be greatly puzzled,
and said he hardly knew what to think. It was
scarcely possible that a sudden fright, however great it
might have been, could have thrown the whole nervous system

so completely out of balance as Miss Burton's seemed
to be. Had she been perfectly well heretofore?

Then Mrs. Burton remembered how nervous and fitful
she had been ever since Annie died. “She took a violent
cold at that time,” the lady said, “and has never been or
looked well since.”

“I thought there must be something behind. A person
in perfect health could hardly be struck down like this by
mere fright. She does not seem to have the free use of her
limbs. Miss Burton”—and he turned to his patient—“lift
your right hand if you can, or speak to me and tell me who
I am.”

The great black eyes were wide open, and fixed upon his
face with an expression which showed that Georgie heard;
but the right hand did not move, and the white lips only
gave forth a queer kind of sound, as they tried in vain to
repeat the doctor's name.

“What is it, doctor? Oh, tell me what ails my darling?”
Mrs. Burton asked, terribly frightened at the look on Georgie's
face, and the peculiar expression of her mouth.

“Auntie,” Maude said, in a low whisper, “come with me;
I'll tell you;” and leading her frightened aunt into the hall,
she told her as gently as possible that Georgie was paralyzed.

It was true. The long-continued strain upon mind and
nerve, which she had endured in guarding her secret, with
the skeleton of detection always threatening her, added to
the terrible shock of the previous night, had been more than
nature could endure without a loud protest; and the prickly
sensation she had felt creeping through every vein was the
precursor to the fearful thing which had come upon her,
striking her down as the lightning strikes the oak, and leaving
just one-half of her helpless, motionless, dead. There
was no feeling in any part of her right side; no power to

move the soft, white hand, which lay just where they put it;
no power to speak audibly in the pale lips whose last act had
been to frame a tissue of falsehoods whereby she could steel
safely through the labyrinth of woe in which she was entangled.
Poor Georgie! There were hot tears shed for her
that bright June morning, when the sun, which should have
shone upon her bridal day, came up over the eastern hills,
and looked in at the windows of the room where she lay so
helpless and so still, knowing perfectly well what was doing
and saying around; but having no power to tell them that
she knew, save by the feeble pressure of the fingers of her
left hand, and the slow shutting of her eyelids.

Wistfully Georgie's eyes followed each movement of the
people around her, as if imploring aid, and resting longest
upon Jack, who wept like a little child over his stricken sister.
All her faults and errors were forgotten in this great calamity
which had come so suddenly upon her; and he remembered
only that she was his sister, the beautiful girl whom he had
loved, and petted, and befriended, and chided, and scolded,
and blamed, ever since he had been old enough to read her
character aright. There were no scoldings, no chidings, no
blaming now; nothing but love and tenderness; and the hot
tears rained in torrents over his face, as, in obedience to a
look in her eye, which he construed into a wish for him to
come nearer to her, he bent his face to hers, and felt the
cold lips trying to kiss his cheek, while the left hand crept
feebly up to his head, and stroked and parted his hair. No
one of all those present thought Jack one whit less manly
for the great choking sobs which he smothered on Georgie's
neck, or the tears which dropped so fast upon her hair and
brow.

With a trembling grasp she held his face close to her own
and tried to tell him something. But it was all in vain that
he strained every nerve of his ear to understand what she

meant. There was nothing to be made out of the mumbling
noise, the only sound she could articulate. It would not
always be thus, the doctor said. She would recover her
powers of speech, partially, if not in whole, and possibly recover
the use of her limbs. He had seen far worse forms
of paralysis from which there was entire recovery. She was
young, and naturally healthy, and had every reason to hope
for entire restoration to health.

“Be of good courage,” he said to her kindly, for he saw
she understood him, and hung eagerly upon his words; “be
of good courage, and you will yet be a happy bride, though
perhaps not to-day.”

There was a sound then from the pallid lips, a low, moaning
sound, and a spasm of pain contracted every muscle of
the white face, while in the dark eyes there was a look
of horror, as if the doctor's words had not been welcome
ones. Maude, who was standing by her, and chafing her
lifeless hands, said to her next, “We have sent for Roy,
Georgie. Do you want to see him?”

At the mention of Roy's name, the dumb lips spoke with
an agonized effort which brought the great sweat-drops upon
cheek and brow.

“No, no, no; Ja-ack,” they said, and the sound was more
like the moan of some wounded animal than like a human
cry, while the eyes seemed as if trying to leap from their
sockets, as they fastened themselves upon Jack.

“What, sister? What is it?” he asked, and with another
mighty effort the lips moved slowly, and one by one made
out the words, “Don't—let—Roy—”

They could not articulate any more, but Jack thought he
comprehended her meaning, and said, “Not let Roy see you
yet? Is that it, sister?”

She clutched his hand nervously in answer to the question
and held it tightly in her own. She did not want to see Roy

then or ever. She could not bear it, she thought; could not
endure to look upon what she had loved and lost just as it
was within her reach. Guilt, remorse, and shame were busy
at work, and those who watched by her little dreamed of the
bitter anguish which was rending her soul and sending out
that rain of perspiration which wet her night-dress about the
neck, and wet her long, black hair, and the pillow on which
she lay, and which was the means eventually of doing her
bodily good. The profuse perspiration seemed in some way
to grapple with, and partially subdue the disease, so that after
an hour or more she could speak more distinctly, and the
little finger of her right hand moved once as Maude was rubbing
it.

“You are already better, Georgie. We will soon have
you well,” Maude said encouragingly, while one of the ladies
in attendance carried the good news that Georgie had
spoken, to Mrs. Burton, who was in strong hysterics on the
sofa in her own room, and over whom poor, ignorant Mr. Burton
had emptied by turns the water-jug, the camphor-bottle,
the cologne and arnica, in his awkward attempts to help her.

Limp and wet, with her false curls as straight as an Indian's
hair, and her under teeth on the floor where the hapless
husband planted his boot heel upon them, and crushed
them out of shape, the poor woman received the news, and
in her joy went into another hysteric fit worse than any
which had preceded it. Frightened now out of his wits, and
taking advantage of the presence of some one with whom he
could leave his spouse, Mr. Burton retreated precipitately
from the room, wondering why the deuce the women wanted
to raise such a row as his wife and Georgie were doing.

“Hanged if I don't take the first train for New York, and
stay there, too, when I get there,” he said, as he rushed out
into the back yard, where he met Roy, just dismounting from
his horse, and looking very anxious and disturbed, though not

as unhappy as one might expect of a man who had just heard
that his bridal, for that day at least, was impossible, and his
bride a paralytic.